Moiunting Demand for Extension of Benifit

The current business recession may put the federal-state system of unemployment insurance to the most severe test since it was initiated under the Social Security Act of 1935. Unemployment today has not reached the high levels prevailing before World War II, nor has the number of insured workers who have exhausted their unemployment benefits mounted to prewar totals. However, a larger proportion of the labor force is now idle than in the postwar recessions of 1949 and 1954, and the number of workers who can no longer draw benefits is approaching the totals in those years. Today, moreover, many more workers are covered by the unemployment insurance system than was the case before the war. Affecting more people, more is expected of jobless compensation as a means of tiding the unemployed, and the country, over bad times.

How hard the system will be pressed naturally depends on how long the recession lasts and how deep it goes. Unemployment rose from mid-February to mid-March by only 25,000 to a total of 5,198,000. But the number of unemployed usually declines slightly in March. Hence the seasonally adjusted rate of unemployment rose from 6.7 per cent of the labor force in February to 7 per cent in March. The fact that the number of persons out of work for 15 weeks or longer rose by 300,000 to a postwar record of 1,446,000 was particularly disturbing.

Figures on unemployment and employment cover so wide a field that they usually can be interpreted in various ways. Whatever the true significance of the latest statistics, they are not sufficiently encouraging to quiet demands for legislation to increase the amount of benefits paid to persons out of work who are eligible for unemployment compensation and to extend the period in which benefits will be paid.